The present invention relates to a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material and more particularly to a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material containing a novel cyan coupler, which is excellent in color reproduction properties and improved in storability of images, particularly in fastness.
Silver halide color photographic light-sensitive materials comprise a substrate provided thereon with multi-layered light-sensitive layers which comprise three kinds of silver halide emulsion layers selectively sensitized so as to be selectively sensitive to blue, green and red light rays, respectively.
A color image is formed by exposing such a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material to light and then subjecting it to a color developing treatment in which a developing agent such as an aromatic primary amine is oxidized with the silver halide and the oxidized developing agent is reacted with a dye-forming coupler. In this process, colors are reproduced by a subtractive color photography in which blue, green and red colors are reproduced by forming images with yellow, magenta and cyan dyes which are complementary colors. In this case, couplers Preferably used must undergo a coupling reaction at a high rate, provide a high color density within a limited developing time and have good color-developing (or dye-forming) properties. In addition, the color-developing dye formed through the coupling reaction must be clear cyan, magenta and yellow dyes which have low minor absorption and can provide color photographic images with good color reproduction properties.
On the other hand, color photographic images thus formed must have good storability under various conditions such as dark storage conditions wherein the images are greatly influenced by humidity, heat or the like and those in which the images are irradiated with rays such as solar rays and indoor lighting rays. Decoloration and change of color of the images as well as yellowing of non-image portions are very serious problems in particular in color print materials.
Couplers serving as color image-forming agents play an important role in achieving the foregoing requirements of the color photographic light-sensitive materials. For this reason, couplers have been improved through the modification of the structures thereof.
Phenol derivatives and naphthol derivatives have conventionally been employed as cyan color image-forming couplers, but the color images formed from these couplers show not only absorption in the desired red region but also unnecessary absorption in the blue and green regions and thus the properties of these cyan couplers are still insufficient. There are also some problems of stability of the color images formed with the phenol derivatives and naphthol derivatives. For instance, color images formed with 2-acylaminophenol cyan couplers disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,367,531; 2,369,929; 2,423,730 and 2,801,171 usually have poor fastness to heat, those formed with 2,5-diacylaminophenol cyan couplers disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,772,162 and 2,895,826 usually have poor fastness to light and those formed with 1-hydroxy-2-naphthamide cyan couplers usually have poor fastness to both light and heat (particularly to heat and humidity).
Couplers free of these defects of the cyan dye-forming couplers have been developed. They include, for instance, 5-hydroxy-6-acylaminocarbostyryl cyan couplers disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,327,173 and 4,564,586; and 4-hydroxy-5-acylaminoxyindole couplers and 4-hydroxy-5-acylamino-2,3-dihydro-1,3-benzimidazol-2-one couplers disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,430,423. These couplers have excellent resistance to light and fastness to heat. They are specific couplers having a hetero atom in the color-developing mother nucleus. The rings having a color-developing dissociative group have the same valence as that of phenol.
As for the couplers having a hetero atom in the ring which has a dissociative group, only 3-hydroxypyridine and 2,6-dihydroxypyridine are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,293,004. However, when 3-hydroxypyridine described in this U.S. Patent is used, it absorbs light in very short wavelength regions and the absorption peak thereof is broad. Further 3-hydroxypyridine is soluble in water. Therefore, 3-hydroxypyridine can not be used as the so-called cyan coupler.
There have been proposed couplers which are obtained by introducing an appropriate group resistant to diffusion into pyridines or pyrimidines substituted with a dissociative group such as a hydroxyl group and which provide a cyan dye excellent in absorption characteristics. However, they are still liable to cause color fog and decoloration towards dark color.